My Heart Heard Music
by Purrs
Summary: What does it mean to live in a world where a crowd of passers-by will break into a perfectly-choreographed musical number at a moment's notice? Where perfect pitch is universal, at least at the times when it really matters? Where song is the ultimate expression of someone's heart and soul? Erik ponders over this often. After all, he can't soulsing.


The audience roars. The curtain falls. A young dancer bounds offstage, the battle-dance still on her toes and " _Dieu veut du sang_ " still on her lips. The ballet master, monsieur Herriot, snaps out that he wants his girls to return at once, but she doesn't want to go over that Act Two ballet _again_ just because a certain person can't figure out which way to brisé first. (If she were in charge, Madelei— _that person_ would be improving far more quickly or _else_.) Instead, she races to the foyer where the crowds are clamoring their way from the auditorium to the streets. She can't go out and greet them—they're much too busy and besides she's been reprimanded much too often for it, especially when she's still in costume—so she waits until not many people are looking in her direction and sautés over to a plaster pillar she's hid behind before. Rounding the pillar at speed, she abruptly crashes into someone. She untangles herself from him in an admittedly undignified way and brushes herself off to compensate. "This is _my_ pillar," she scolds the boy, for a boy he is, and a gangle-limbed boy at that.

The bohemien stares up at her with dandelion eyes, the brightest things about him. The rest is a patchwork of coal-dust curls and eggshell-brown skin and jaundiced-pale sleeves. He looks maybe a year or two her younger (sixteen?), and he's definitely out of place here. Her gaze returns to his, and she realizes that he's been devouring her costume. She shifts position and draws back, affronted, but it seems he has more eyes for her soldier cap than for her chest. That's all right. "You were in there? Performing?" he asks, waving in the direction of the stage.

"Yes," she says.

She hadn't realized it was possible for his eyes to open any wider. "Did you sing?"

"I did, but I mostly dance." She peers down her nose at him. "What are you doing here?"

"I was listening to the opera. What's it called?"

" _Les Huguenots_."

He's still half-sprawled on the floor, so he takes a moment to change that; the hand that pushes him up shifts into leaning-support, and the opposite elbow lolls on an upright knee. "It was beautiful."

"Thanks." She joins him on the floor.

He smiles. "What do you think of the show?"

"Well… I like it enough. It isn't quite as fun to perform as last season's _Robert le diable_ , but such is the way of tragedies." She shrugs.

He sighs. "I hoped that Raoul wouldn't die. I didn't expect Valentine to be killed with him."

"What else did you expect from an opera about a massacre?" She flicks her hand against his shoulder.

"Well, when you say it like _that_ …"

Some time later, she laughs a laugh that carries and echoes. She pauses, not having realized how empty the place has grown. "Don't you have anywhere to go?"

" _Le gadže atkozime deren d'es man mindeg_ ," he mutters in the tongue she has heard sometimes at the traveling fairs, then: "I do, yes."

"So why aren't you there?"

"You don't want me here." It isn't a question. His dark face darkens. He stands. "I'll leave."

She sits up and stretches her hand to him. "You don't live here, that's all I meant, and your family would want you. You can come back if you want."

"Oh!" A sunlight grin pierces the clouds. "I will! Will you come here again?"

"I'm here all the time," she agrees.

"What's your name?"

"Toinon—Antoinette. And yours?"

"Patrin."

"That's an odd name."

"It's mine," Patrin defends.

Antoinette lifts a shoulder. "All right. See you soon."

"See you soon." And he's gone.

He comes back a few days later, and again, and soon it's a regular thing to look forward to. Occasionally they sit frozen, worried that she'll be caught and brought back backstage or he'll be caught and told to leave, but their spot is just enough out of sight that they don't draw attention. Once he brings a little yellow cake to share, called something like 'zobova' (she can't get it right), and they get crumbs all over the floor. She returns the favor the day after with a pain au chocolat. Another time she sneaks him backstage and gives him a tour of the nooks and crannies of the Théâtre de l'Académie Impériale de Musique. The building was supposed to be temporary, she tells him, but anyway the Opéra's been here longer than she's been alive. They find a place for him to hide and watch the performances; he adores all of the arias, even in the few opéras he doesn't like. Sometimes she'll sneak a glance from onstage to meet his eyes, which glow with fascination like twin suns.

One day, when he comes, he acts distant, like his mind is on something else. He doesn't respond to her prying at first, so she drops it. But just when they're wrapping up their conversation for the day, he blurts out, "I don't want to go."

"Trin, you'll see me tomorrow," Antoinette chides, picking absently at that place where the paint keeps peeling no matter what anyone tries.

He shakes his head and slumps against the wall. "You know we travel. We have to leave. It's not—friendly here for us right now."

"Why not?"

"Toinon," he says, arms folded, flat voice and flat eyes in a narrow parchment-brown face, and she remembers the drobova and the snatches of the other tongue.

"Oh." She forgets, sometimes. He doesn't talk about it. "So this is goodbye, then." Patrin is a very good friend. It starts to sink in that she'll probably never see him again. Music drifts in, soft-swelling and minor-sad. "I hardly knew you long enough  
I only wish—"

His face flushes. "Adieu," he says, which doesn't complete the rhyme or the meter, and all but runs off. She stands there, staring, and the accompaniment fades away.

Weeks pass. She doesn't see him again.


End file.
